The official Republican Party position on arms for Ukraine turned out to be at odds with almost all the party’s national security leaders after the GOP released its platform yesterday, July 18.

As reported, the tide turned at last week's national security committee platform meeting in Cleveland when the Trump campaign orchestrated a set of events to make sure that the GOP would not pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.

After one of the committee's members proposed a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and "providing lethal defensive weapons" to the Ukrainian military, Trump staffers opposed it, coming up with another amendment to strip out the platform's call for "providing lethal defensive weapons" and replace it with softer language calling for "appropriate assistance."